Ultra, Sony’s 4K Streaming Service, To Launch April 4

At CES this year, Sony announced that they would be entering the streaming service market. Specifically they wanted to focus on bringing high quality 4K content to owners of Sony’s Bravia TV sets, which run Android TV. This service, called Ultra, will allow users to purchase movies for $30 each to keep forever in both ultra-high definition and HDR.

Some of the available titles include Concussion and the original Ghostbusters which will be remastered. More content will be added throughout the year. In addition to movies, Son is also working on adding TV shows such as Breaking Bad to the service this summer, with options to purchase single episodes or an entire season.

We wanted to do something that looked a little different, felt a little different… but still felt like a premium experience

-Sony Pictures Entertainment VP Jake Winett

The interface is vanilla, opting for a minimal navigation UI with large poster art for each movie. Right now users will only be able to purchase content. Renting may be an added feature down the line.

This should be available exclusively to Bravia set owners next week Monday, April 4th. There is no information about whether Sony plans to expand this service to more devices in the future or even more Android TVs. Still, if you’ve been looking for 4K movies and have a Sony UHD TV, you should look forward to the app’s launch early next week.

Nick Felker is a student Electrical & Computer Engineering student at Rowan University (C/O 2017) and the student IEEE webmaster. When he's not studying, he is a software developer for the web and Android (Felker Tech). He has several open source projects on GitHub (http://github.com/fleker)
Devices: Moto G-2013 Moto G-2015, Moto 360, Google ADT-1, Nexus 7-2013 (x2), Lenovo Laptop, Custom Desktop.
Although he was an intern at Google, the content of this blog is entirely independent and his own thoughts.